I am excellent at what I do. I don't think that's bragging necessarily, I just happen to have stumbled into a job that suits me quite well. Don't get me wrong, I still have a ton to learn as a nurse and I am far from perfect, but damn it all if my particular personality isn't just geared towards working in the emergency department. Unfortunately, as any floor nurse will gladly point out, being an excellent ED nurse does not equate to being excellent at other areas of life. In fact, the very things that make me great at my job are also some of my biggest flaws, and that's been weighing on me recently.
Five years ago I was helping my girlfriend at the time study for one of her upcoming nursing tests when I began to realize how cool this nursing thing was. You get to help people: great; you get to apply critical thinking and use science: interesting; and you get ridiculous amounts of time off: fantastic! I realized that it fit my personality to a tee. I love to help people when they are going through hard times, I can be very compassionate and comforting, and I can stay cool under pressure. These are great qualities that have made me very successful at my job, but they also have limits and I've been running into those limits recently, realizing that this could be problematic.
For example, I can be very supportive and compassionate up to a point, but when I feel too relied on it becomes overwhelming and I tend to just drop out of people's lives, frequently hurting feelings, breaking relationships, and generally showing my true colors as a fairly selfish person. In the past only a few people have suffered from this flaw in my character because my threshold has been higher. But recently, as I've used up more and more of this emotional energy at work, I find that it takes very little in my personal life to max me out. It turns out my well of compassion is not as deep as I would like to believe. This happens to work fine in a setting where I can work with someone for a few hours to help them through what is often a terrible day, but it becomes a real issue when a friend or family member is working through something hard in their lives for months at a time.
Equally as troubling is how hard-hearted I am finding I can be. It is astounding to me what you can get used to. The few stories that I find myself sharing from work are largely the ridiculous and comical ones. I avoid talking about many things simply because I wonder if people will judge me for how I see them. This is hard to admit, but I'm afraid I'll get an emotional reaction from what I've shared and realize that there is no subsequent reaction in me. Being able to quiet my emotions and generally have carefully measured reactions is a useful skill at work, but in many ways I find it deadens my heart in other areas and I have difficulty not thinking people are overly sensitive or reactionary in my daily life.
I guess what I'm driving at here is that the human heart has limitations and I've been butting up against mine for a while now. My lengthy patience and sensitive heart are having more and more demanded of them and it's tempting just to bow out. "Am I my brother's keeper?" asked Cain. Yes, yes I am, and what once came easy is now much harder. But this is where it gets better, as I've said before in this blog, when I come to the end of myself I know that there, more than anywhere else, there is where I find God. It becomes a choice, then, of whether to settle back into my selfishness and make excuses for my lack of empathy, or to surrender myself, my weights, and my failings before God trusting in a well that I've been promised will never run dry.
My hope is that now that I'm at the limit of my ability to care I can finally learn how to love others as God loves me...with a love that is not my own.
Comments
Post a Comment